[blog](blog): 2025-01-02 blog, step-security suggestion (#616)

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Signed-off-by: Ralph Hightower <32745442+RalphHightower@users.noreply.github.com>

* [blog](blog): 2025-01-02 blog

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Signed-off-by: Ralph Hightower <32745442+RalphHightower@users.noreply.github.com>

_posts/2025/01/2025-01-02-ChiefJusticeRobertsSwipesAtVPElectVance.md

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+---
+layout: post
+tags: [Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), ChiefJustice, John Roberts, vice president-elect, politics]
+categories: [JD Vance]
+date: 2025-01-02 3:20 PM
+excerpt: "“Every Administration suffers defeats in the court system — sometimes in cases with major ramifications for executive or legislative power or other consequential topics. Nevertheless, for the past several decades, the decisions of the courts, popular or not, have been followed, and the Nation has avoided the standoffs that plagued the 1950s and 1960s[^41]<sup>,</sup>[^42]. Within the past few years, however, elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings. These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected.” – John Roberts, Supreme Court Chief Justice"
+#image: 'BASEURL/assets/blog/img/.png'
+#description:
+#permalink:
+title: "Supreme Justice Chief Justice Veiled “Head Slap” At Vice President-Elect JD Vance"
+---
+
+
+## [Opinion / Chief Justice John Roberts takes a swipe at JD Vance - The Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/01/01/roberts-vance-court-orders-trump-constitution/)
+
+*The vice president-elect has repeatedly suggested that government officials may defy court orders.*
+
+Ruth Marcus. January 1, 2025 at 5:27 p.m. EST
+
+Chief Justice John Roberts in his year-end report of the Supreme Court took a veiled swipe at vice president-elect JD Vance for suggesting that sometimes it is okay to ignore the federal courts' final ruling of law[^11].
+
+[^11]: @RalphHightower: I do disagree with the Supreme Court's ruling on presidential immunity that granted Trump a pass to ignore the Constitution. I agree with Sonia Sotomayor that we don't elect "kings".
+
+Roberts addressed multiple concerns of an independent judiciary:
+
+- violence or threats directed against judges
+- efforts to intimidate judges by:
+    - rise of social media
+    - disinformation, including foreign actors
+- **government officials defying court orders[^21]**
+
+[^21]: @RalphHightower: The final concern was emboldened for emphasis.  
+
+Referring to the court's 1954 ruling in *Brown v. Board of Education* when southern governors defied the desegragation of public schools, Roberts wrote, “Judicial independence is undermined unless the other branches [of government] are firm in their responsibility to enforce the court’s decrees. The courage of federal judges to uphold the law in the face of massive local opposition — and the willingness of the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations[^31] to stand behind those judges — are strong testaments to the relationship between judicial independence and the rule of law in our Nation’s history.”
+
+[^31]: @RalphHightower: Eisenhower was Republican and Kennedy was Democrat.
+
+Roberts wrote, “Every Administration suffers defeats in the court system — sometimes in cases with major ramifications for executive or legislative power or other consequential topics. Nevertheless, for the past several decades, the decisions of the courts, popular or not, have been followed, and the Nation has avoided the standoffs that plagued the 1950s and 1960s[^41]<sup>,</sup>[^42]. Within the past few years, however, elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings. These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected.”
+
+[^41]: @RalphHightower: I was in elementary and high school during the 60's. 1968 was the year that the Supreme Court demanded, **"You will integrate now!", and the year that I entered high school. Growing up in South Carolina, a state that I love, some schools integrated without incident; others, not so much as in Lamar where parents overturned a school bus. The school system I was in, Bamberg-Ehrhardt integrated peacefully. 
+[^42]: @RalphHightower: Star Trek debuted in the late 60's. I didn't think anything was extraordinary with Uhura being on the bridge since the bridge officers were international, with Sulu and Chekov, and interplanetary with Spock, half Vulcan and half human. But Nichelle Nichols confided to Martin Luther King that she was considering leaving Star Trek. He convinced her to stay, that she was a beacon to African-American for having a role of responsibility and not a nanny or housekeeper on television. 
+
+JD Vance, Yale Law School Class of 2013, advocated in a podcast, “If I was giving him [Trump] one piece of advice, fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state.
+Replace them with our people. And when the courts — because you will get taken to court — and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’” Vance's wife, Usha, clerked for Roberts from 2017 to 2018[^51].
+
+[^51]: @RalphHightower: *"Oh, the irony of the Vance's connections!"*
+
+Vance reiterated his position — although he tried to soft-pedal it — in a [February interview](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-2-4-24-white-house-national/story?id=106926540) with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos:
+
+**Vance**: “The president has to be able to run the government as he thinks he should. That’s the way the Constitution works. It has been thwarted too much by the way our bureaucracy has worked over the past 15 years.”
+
+**Stephanopoulos**: “The Constitution also says the president must abide by legitimate Supreme Court rulings, doesn’t it?”
+
+**Vance**: “The Constitution says that the Supreme Court can make rulings, but if the Supreme Court — and, look, I hope that they would not do this, but if the Supreme Court said the president of the United States can’t fire a general, that would be an illegitimate ruling, and the president has to have Article II prerogative under the Constitution to actually run the military as he sees fit.”
+
+In an [interview](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/03/15/mr-maga-goes-to-washington-00147054) with Politico Magazine, Vance repeated, “If the elected president says, ‘I get to control the staff of my own government,’ and the Supreme Court steps in and says, ‘You’re not allowed to do that’ — like, that is the constitutional crisis,” Vance said. “It’s not whatever Trump or whoever else does in response. When the Supreme Court tells the president he can’t control the government anymore, we need to be honest about what’s actually going on.”
+
+The prospect of the Musk[^111]/Trump/Vance Administration coming to blows with unfavorable rulings from the Supreme Court is real, and imminent. Trump is the most litigious person in the United States, filing lawsuits for any perceived wrong.
+
+[^111]: @RalphHightower: When Elon Musk threw a monkey wrench into the pre-Christmas Continuing Resolution to avoid casting a pall for federal employees, without a paycheck, over the Christmas, New Year's, and Hanukkah holidays, it showed that Musk s the puppeteer and Trump is the puppet
+